by Jan Burke
“This the Irene Kelly that called here earlier?” a voice asked over the speaker.
I quickly picked up the phone and said, “Yes, it is,” to the twenty-third Monroe.
19
“THIS IS JUNE MONROE. Are you the reporter who’s going to help my son?”
Her son. Oh hell, I thought, my mouth suddenly dry. I glanced over my shoulder to see Rachel and Lisa watching me intently. I hunched closer to the phone, took a deep breath. “I need to talk to you, Mrs. Monroe, but I’d rather speak to you in person.”
“Hmm. This sounds like trouble to me. Have Lucas call me, then maybe I’ll talk to you. But I need to talk to him first.”
“I’m afraid — I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Why not?” She paused, then added, “Don’t tell me he’s fallen off the—” She caught herself, but I knew what she had started to ask.
“No,” I said. “He hasn’t been drinking.”
“Oh? Then what’s making you sound so nervous?”
“Could you hold on, please? I need to switch phones.”
I excused myself from my guests for a moment; Cody followed me back into the bedroom, where I picked up the extension. I waited while Rachel hung up the kitchen extension.
“Mrs. Monroe?”
“I’m still here.”
“I need to talk to you about Lucas, but I don’t want to do it over the phone. It’s late now, but—”
“Late to you, maybe. I work nights. This is the middle of the day.”
Cody jumped up onto my lap. I stroked his fur, trying to steady my nerves, while my mind frantically sought a way to gently handle this situation. “You’ll be up for a while, Mrs. Monroe?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’d like to drive out to see you.”
“Now? A white woman planning on coming all the way to Riverside from Las Piernas at eleven o’clock at night, just to talk to some old black woman?” She paused, but before I could reply, she said, “What has happened to Lucas?”
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t make my voice work.
“I asked you, what has happened to him?”
“Please, Mrs. Monroe—”
“Don’t you ‘please Mrs. Monroe’ me. You’ve got me worried past all reason now. I don’t like it. You drive out here, it will take you at least an hour to get to my place. What am I going to do all that time except worry?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Cody batted at the phone cord.
“Just tell me,” she said, but her voice was softer now.
“I’m a stranger to you, Mrs. Monroe. I knew Lucas many years ago—”
“He’s told me all about you. You were one of his students. You don’t know me, but he’s been telling me a lot about you. Lucas trusts you. He leads a lonesome life now; he doesn’t trust many people. But he trusts you. That’s good enough for me.”
“I don’t deserve it,” I whispered, and never meant anything so sincerely in all my life.
“God will be the judge of that, as He will be of all of us. My son may have a few problems, but he’s smart. I’ve never seen a child so smart as he was. He’s straightening out now, getting himself on the right path. Just like I knew he would,” she said. “I have always known it. Charles — his older brother — thinks I’m crazy, but he just doesn’t know Lucas like I do.”
“I didn’t even know he had a brother,” I said. Oh, yes, I thought. Let’s talk about his brother, his uncles, his cousins — about anything but what has happened to your hopes.
“Well, now, never mind that. Let’s just talk about Lucas,” she said, taking up the reins as if she had heard my thoughts and feared I would bolt.
“I wanted to find Lucas,” I began, voice unsteady. “I don’t think he was ready to talk to me yet, but I needed to ask him about a photograph.”
I paused, but she didn’t offer any comment on the photo, so I went on.
“I was also worried about him. He hadn’t been to the shelter for a few days. I called a friend of mine who — well, let’s just say she works with the homeless every now and then. We asked around; talked to a lot of people who knew him, men who live on the streets. No one had seen him since Thursday.”
Silence. Cody’s purring not enough of a comfort.
“Eventually someone gave us some information that led us to an abandoned hotel. We found Lucas there.”
“Was he hurt?” she asked, and I knew she wanted that to be the problem, knew that she had already somehow heard the truth before I spoke it.
“No. He was — he was in one of the rooms. Up high, one of the highest floors. He was lying there, very peacefully.”
She made a short, high-pitched keening sound.
“His heart,” I managed to choke out.
“No… not Lucas. Not Lucas!” she said, again and again and again.
When I thought June Monroe might hear me, I said, “You shouldn’t be alone. Is there anyone who can be with you tonight?”
“You’re going to be with me. I’m coming down there right now, you understand?”
I did. Perfectly. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep, anyway.
“I’ll call Charles. He’ll take me down there. You’re going to take us to see my boy. I’ll call you right back.”
She hung up. I sat there numbly until the phone rang in my hand.
As I held up the receiver, an angry voice came from it. “What the hell is wrong with you, calling my mother up and telling her something like that on the phone?”
“Your mother called me. And I didn’t want to tell her—”
“All I got to say to you is, this damn well better be my brother. If it’s anyone else, you’re gonna find yourself in so much mess, you’re gonna wish you were in a refrigerated drawer right next to Mr. John Doe.”
“Listen, I’m sorry about your brother—”
“Save your ‘sorry,’ bitch.”
I was on the verge of hanging up in his ear when I thought of his mother. I owed it to Lucas and to her to keep my mouth shut. I only half-listened as he spouted off a mixture of anger and abuse; it occurred to me that a lot of it was predicated on the assumption that I must have misidentified the body. If my sister, Barbara, had been lying in a faraway morgue, I probably would have held on to a similar thought — as fiercely, if not in quite the same way.
When it looked as if he would not wind down any time soon, I said, “I can give you directions, or I can let you figure it out on your own. But while you sit here giving me a hard time, your mother is alone. Either way, I’m off this phone in about another thirty seconds.”
He used about five of those seconds to brood, then said, “Give me the damned directions.”
WHEN I EMERGED from the bedroom, Lisa was at the door, just waiting to wish me a final good night before going home. I apologized for being tied up on the phone so long.
“Was that Lucas Monroe’s mother?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, surprised.
“I saw Roberta today. She told me Lucas had died of a heart attack, and that she didn’t even know how to contact his family. That seemed so awful; I’m so glad you were able to help. Hard on you, though, isn’t it?”
Her face was full of sympathetic concern. “I didn’t know you knew Lucas,” I said.
“He worked with my father. He was an unforgettable person. Very bright, always concerned with others. He was always very kind of me — used to stick up for me with Andre. No matter what has happened since, that’s how I’ll choose to remember him.”
If only the rest of the world would be so kind to his memory, I thought. She secured a promise to get together again soon and left.
“HOW WILL YOU recognize them?” Rachel asked as we waited outside of the county morgue.
“I don’t think I’ll have much trouble figuring out who they are,” I replied, twisting a tissue to shreds. “Won’t be too many people coming down here this late
.”
Rachel had insisted on keeping her promise to Frank to keep an eye on me, and wouldn’t let me meander through town on my own. She asked me to page Frank to let him know where we would be. This set off an electronic chain reaction: Frank called back, called the morgue, and then paged Reed Collins, who then asked the coroner’s office to page him when the Monroes arrived.
As it turned out, we needed Frank’s help anyway. Even though the morgue is open twenty-four hours a day for receiving bodies, the normal “viewing” hours were 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. If Frank hadn’t pulled some strings, I would have been the one to tell the Monroes they’d made the drive for nothing. I’m sure that would have gone over big with Lucas’s brother.
We were almost twenty minutes early. I decided to wait outside; a vain attempt to not think about what went on inside of the building.
I looked up to see a woman quietly and resolutely making her way toward us on a younger man’s arm. She was a fine-looking woman, a woman who took care with her appearance without becoming a lacquered mannequin. Not afraid of a few wrinkles or the gray in her short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. Something both old-fashioned and yet lively about her.
When the man walked into the light as they drew nearer, I felt a moment of unsettling recognition. Had Lucas Monroe never lived on the streets, I thought, he would look very much like the man standing before me. I quickly amended the thought — had he stayed off the streets and grown to hate me, he would look like this man.
The woman looked at me, then glanced at Rachel, but quickly let her gaze come back to me. “You’re more upset than this other one,” she said. “I think you must be Irene.”
CHARLES LOST THE VERY BRIEF argument that would have allowed me to wait with Rachel while they went in to see the body. I wish he had won.
I do not ever again want to be in the county morgue, not unless I am dead. I do not want to stand at the side of a mother who must say of a video image of a body pulled out of a drawer, “Yes, that’s my son.” June Monroe did not carry on loudly, did not sob or wail. She swayed a little, and so ferociously bit the hand that flew to her mouth in a balled fist, that she drew blood from it. Charles folded her to him, setting aside the glare to make a silent request. I acknowledged it and excused myself. Reed followed me out of the room, and asked me to wait for the Monroes in a small conference room across the hall. He kept the door open, and watched for June and Charles Monroe. I spent some time dodging his questions about how I had located Lucas’s mother. He wasn’t very happy with me.
After a while the Monroes came out into the hallway. Reed asked her a few questions about when she had last seen Lucas. She told him that he had come to Riverside a little over two weeks ago for a brief visit. It was the first time she had seen Lucas in several years.
Reed carefully worked his way toward asking, “What did he talk about on that visit?”
She caught him at it anyway. “Nothing that would concern the police,” she said, then seemed to change her mind. “He asked my forgiveness and he got it. He had it before he arrived.”
“Just working his twelve steps, that’s all,” Charles said.
“My son Charles thinks that the fact that his brother went to AA somehow made that apology less sincere. I don’t. Lucas wanted and received my forgiveness.” She folded her arms across her chest in a gesture that said that would be that.
“When was the last time you saw your brother?” Reed asked Charles.
Charles didn’t answer.
“He hasn’t seen his brother since Christmas,” June said, ignoring Charles’s glare. “Charles came down to Las Piernas every year, as a favor to me.” She paused, then added, “Not to speak to Lucas, just to let me know if he was still alive.”
“Guess I ought to be grateful,” Charles said. “Lucas has gone and saved me from making that trip again.”
I saw June Monroe stiffen in her chair. She pursed her lips together, as though to hold back a retort. She pointedly turned her back to Charles and began to ask questions of Reed Collins. Her son was a young man, too young to have a heart attack. What did the police know about his death?
Reed was straightforward in his answers, if not detailed. He told her that although Lucas’s college ring was missing, so far there was no evidence that he had died anything other than a natural death. He told her again that tests were being done just to make sure. I wondered if all of this was going right past her; she seemed numb. But she merely thanked Reed and then drew a breath and asked for time alone with me. After protests from Charles, they left us alone in the small conference room.
“Mrs. Monroe,” I began, but she waved my sympathy aside before I could offer it.
“Nothing can hurt him now. I have faith, Irene Kelly. Faith. My faith sustains me. I know my son was a good man, a good, good man. I know the Lord will take care of him. Charles, he doesn’t believe. He tells me he lost his faith in Vietnam, but I don’t know if that’s so. This will be much harder for him, I’m afraid.” She closed her eyes for a moment, drawing another deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, she gave me a look that was so no-nonsense, she could have X-rayed me with it.
“Are we going to work together, Irene Kelly?”
20
“YOU CAN HELP my son,” she said when I hesitated. “He wanted your help before he died, and you can still give it to him.”
“You know what he wanted to talk to me about?”
“Yes. His reputation.”
“Oh,” I said.
Her mouth set into a thin, tight line. “Don’t tell me I was mistaken. I told you I would trust you. Don’t tell me that you’re no better than that detective — Collings? Was that his name?”
“Collins. Reed Collins.”
“Well, Lucas was just a bum as far as that man is concerned. I could see that from the moment he met us. Mr. Collins has other work to attend to, I’m sure. And Lucas wouldn’t count for much around here, would he? So this Mr. Collins, he’s just ready to just wash his hands of this whole mess.”
“It’s hard to tell,” I said. “Reed has been following up on some things he might ignore if he just wanted to take the easy way out of this.”
“Be that as it may, I’m asking you if you think Lucas was just a — a nothing, a nobody.”
“Of course not. Look, Mrs. Monroe. I don’t know what happened to Lucas, or how he ended up on the street—”
“That’s easy. He drank. He drank and drank and drank. His father drank — drank himself to death. They say alcoholism sometimes might be genetic. I don’t know if Lucas got it from his father or what. It’s an illness, that’s all. Some folks, well, to them, it’s a name you call somebody. Alcoholic. Like that settles something.”
She shook her head. “Well, none of that matters to me now. All I know is that my son spent the end of his life sober. And I know he had this idea, this dream of his. It was a quest, you might say.” She paused, then added, “I think you had something to do with that. He saw you, and he saw a way to get back something he had lost.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what it was he—”
She didn’t wait for me to finish. “Do you like the name Lucas?”
“Well, yes, it’s a fine name.”
“Lucas Monroe used to be a good name. That’s what he lost, and that’s what he wanted back. His good name. He told me he would come home, you see, but first he—”
She was interrupted when the door opened. Charles started to enter, caught her look of disapproval, and stayed in the doorway. He frowned back at her. “How long you gonna be?”
“You need eyeglasses?” she said.
He didn’t answer.
“Did you see me walk out of that door?”
“I have to get back home.”
“Go on, then,” she said. “Go.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“Oh yes you are. Just get my bag out of your car. I can get a taxicab to a hotel. You go on back to Riverside.”
“I’ll
wait,” he said in martyred tone.
She cleared her throat. “Excuse us for a moment, Ms. Kelly.”
I stood and moved toward the door. Charles was blocking it.
“Charles Monroe,” I heard her say behind me.
He put on a false smile and stepped back, bowing with exaggerated politeness. “Oh, pardon me.”
I went out into the hall and looked for Rachel. She was in a waiting room at the front of the building, reading an old copy of a tabloid magazine. She looked up over the top of it and smiled. “Aliens will arrive any day now,” she said. “This is reported by a woman who just came back from the future.”
“Does this mean I won’t get a chance to collect my retirement?”
“Sorry, you’re out of luck. You look tired. Ready to go home?”
“No, sorry, Rachel.”
“Why not?” another voice asked. I turned to see Pete coming down the hall, Frank behind him.
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked.
“Good to see you, too,” Pete said. “We come here all the time, remember?”
“Just decided to let Rachel go home,” Frank said. “Reed said you were in the conference room with Monroe’s mother. Has she already left?”
“No, not yet. In fact, I wanted to ask you if we could put her up for the night.”
“She’s staying here in town?”
“There’s a lot that needs to be settled. I just can’t imagine her staying in a hotel. Not after all that’s happened tonight.”
“You going to put both of them up?” Rachel asked.
“Both?” Pete asked.
“Her son’s with her,” Rachel said. “A real asshole.”
“Come on, Rachel, his brother just died,” I said.
She shrugged, nothing apologetic in it.
“You know these people?” Pete said. “I thought—”
“It will be fine,” I said, feeling my patience slipping from me.
“I’m sure it will be,” Frank said quickly, giving Pete a quelling glance. “Rachel, thanks for everything.”
